<~> BOOK 2 - CHAPTER 71

"Where are we headed first?" I asked Luna as she pulled me through the crowded city streets. Her cute red and white fox tail bounced behind her as she led me along. Every now and then she would glance back at me with her bright blue eyes and show me her excited smile. I wasn't the only one who had been on an extended dungeon dive, my friends had been in there even longer. I never asked how long they had been down there before meeting me, but considering how long it took us to climb out of there as a group, it must have been a long time.

("There's this bakery near the edge of the city that sells the meat pies I was telling you about. It's early enough today that they should still have some in stock for lunch!") Luna told me through the magic rings our group wore, except for Aria.

"Hey, Luna! Slow down! I'm coming with you two!" Piper groused from behind me. She pulled her fiery red hair out of her face as she struggled to keep up with us. Most of the people in the streets made way for our fierce healer and swordswoman but it wasn't until we got off the main road connected to the dungeon that she didn't have to struggle to keep up with my enthusiastic girlfriend. "I know you're excited Luna, gods know that I'm itching to eat some food that we didn't fish out of the dungeon or take as rations, but it's too crowded to be running off."

Piper focused on Luna as she silently responded to Piper through the rings. After a few moments of silence, she sighed. "I know Helena is plenty strong enough to protect you, that's not the issue. It would just be a gigantic pain to find you again if you two lost me in this mass of people." Piper rolled her eyes and looked over at me. "I haven't seen her this excited in a while. Come on, the place isn't much farther from here."

The three of us walked through the crowds that were a bit more dispersed on this road. There were still plenty of people here but the path was a bit more narrow so it wasn't quite as busy as the main dungeon road. This area looked more residential, they were homes for the many people that operated the businesses and stalls on the main road.

"Are you doing okay with the crowds?" Piper asked me curiously.

I laughed. "There's a lot of people here but it isn't much different from where I come from really. The paths on the... grounds of my learning place would get just as packed like this around lunchtime too," I responded. No idea how to say community college in their tongue. Draconic tongue, as I've only recently been informed. The crowds weren't unusual, about the same as a mall or the college campus, the part that was novel to me was the people.

"Good! Fallow isn't that large of a city but it's much bigger than any of the villages between here and Ironcastle. Most of the places we'll need to visit will probably involve crowds like these, outside of the dungeon delves of course, so it's good that they aren't a problem for you. Some villagers freeze up when they're surrounded by so many people for the first time."

Now that we were out of the dungeon I was getting a better look at all of the different races of people here. Beastkin were walking around in all sorts of animal flavors, cute children with animal ears ran past pretty often. Humans were the next most numerous and it was sometimes a challenge to differentiate the beastkin from the humans that walked by without a closer look. They weren't consistently just humans with animal ears and tails, sometimes their animal parts looked blended into their bodies in completely different ways. Some had more animalistic limbs but perfectly human faces and some had an animal head but were otherwise human, it was crazy how much more variety it gave the crowds. The humans ranged from pale light-skinned people all the way to charcoal black-skinned people and everything in between in a surprisingly even mix. I could see hints of the different ethnicities from my world in them but their features were much more varied and none of them lined up with any particular ethnicities one to one from back home. The variation between people's faces here was almost as distinct as the variation between all of the different beastkin.

There were also a lot of drakken out here, the short dragon people with more animalistic legs. They seemed more numerous in the crowds compared to when we were in the dungeon where they made up a smaller percentage of the people. There were also some draco walking around, the more human-like dragon people, but they were less numerous than any of the other groups. I also spotted a few of them with wings! Although I didn't see anyone flying around here, so who knows if they are actually functional wings or not.

I haven't seen any of the other races around yet, the semi-aquatic Aquiluxes or the plant-like Forn people. Apparently this is a region mostly ruled by dragons. Does that make dragons de facto royalty? I wouldn't be surprised if they were as powerful as the fantasy stories always made them out to be in my world. I was curious if they were like, four-legged winged lizards or if they were more like giant draco. I hadn't thought to ask but it doesn't seem like the right time for those kinds of questions right now.

("Here it is! This is the place and they still have some in stock! I'm going to tell Piper to buy each of us one!") Luna said rapidly.

Piper chuckled and nodded before stepping to the counter to order for the three of us. Luna's smile faltered a little, her ears tilting ever so slightly back, giving away that something was bothering her.

I squeezed her hand to grab her attention. ("Something wrong?")

Her brow wrinkled a little. ("Just sad that I can't be the one to buy them for all of us, it can be frustrating trying to talk to shop keeps.") Her fingers reached up to trace the scars on her throat, remnants of the trauma that had left her almost entirely mute.

I wrapped an arm around her and pulled her against me. There wasn't much I could say here, it was better to just literally give her someone to lean on. She seemed to brighten up as she took comfort in me holding her.

"Cool it lovebirds, we're in public," Piper said with a laugh once she returned with the food. We weren't the only people around being touchy with each other nearby so I figured Piper was just teasing us. I wouldn't want to do something inappropriate in public but it didn't seem to be an issue from the context.

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"Three meat pies! Luna's favorite! She always makes us eat these before going on a new delve. I like them, but she's crazy about them," Piper said with a laugh.

"What kind of meat is in them?" I asked while lightly raking my fork across the crispy crust.

"Fowl. The land around here isn't good for much else. Even most of the grain here is brought in from Ironcastle, it wouldn't even be possible for a town out here to exist if it wasn't for the dungeon. There's a reason this place was named Fallow."

I looked around at all the pine trees. "They can't grow much food here? It doesn't look barren, why would pine trees grow but other crops not grow here?"

Piper shrugged. "I don't know much about farming. I grew up on an orchard, not a traditional crop farm so I don't know much about why the ground here isn't good for it. I wasn't really involved in the planting part either so I couldn't tell you if other kinds of trees would work. I mostly just collected fruit and took care of the animals. There must be something wrong with the soil here though because they can't seem to grow much of anything."

"Could the dungeon have something to do with it?" I asked.

"Could be, my guess would be as good as yours."

("Enough talking! Try the food before it gets cold!") Luna urged.

I chuckled at her eagerness and broke the crust to take a bite. It was delicious! The meat was rich and flavorful, seasoned with something I couldn't place and it tasted pretty unique to me. Hell, the spices might not even exist on earth. The crust was flaky and had a satisfying crunch to it without being dry or overpowering. It was so good I decided that I agreed with Luna, these meat pies were amazing!

Luna gave me a pleased grin. ("So, how do you like it?")

She knew damn well that I liked it, there was no way it wasn't plain on my face as I took my time to savor each bite. The only reason I chose to respond at all was because I didn't need to stop eating to answer while using the rings. ("It's soooo good,") I replied.

("I'm glad,") Luna replied with a giggle.

Piper laughed at my reaction to the food. "Seems you like it. Great, now it'll be even harder to talk Luna out of this place every time. I hope you're willing to give my favorite place a try too, you might like it even more."

I licked my lips. "After this, I think I'd be up for trying out some new food."

Once we finished eating we walked around the town. Our funds were limited right now and we would have to visit a money changer before we could use any of the gold coins we had found in the dungeon. Piper suggested that it would be better to wait for Maxwell to finish with the hunter's association before we bothered with that, but it would be a while before he would be finished there so we had a lot of time to just look around.

Near the main road that met perpendicular to the road leading to the dungeon was an aqueduct that carried freshwater through the center of town from a spring up in the mountains down to the lake on the other side of the valley. Because this place had grown out of a town that formed around the dungeon, many of the businesses had paid money to have this place furnished with a simple sewage system that connected to the aqueduct on the other side of town. It made me much less interested in visiting the downstream lake but I wasn't sure how bad it would be, especially since their sewer reconnected with the leftover freshwater before making it to the lake. Piper and Luna both seemed quite pleased to talk about how genius the sewer and water system was here. I guess I should just be pleased that this world did have something similar to functioning toilets instead of something more basic like latrines and outhouses. The large aqueduct that cut through the city built from bright white concrete and stone did look pretty with the sparkling clear water flowing through it.

The buildings looked like simple constructions of stone but had a lot of decorative reliefs carved into the stone walls of all kinds of things. A few of the buildings were painted but a majority of them were just plain whites and greys with blue fresco accents on many of the buildings. A lot of the building's doors, shuttered windows, and flooring used pine wood, not a surprise based on the availability of the building material. There was some glass around here and there too but it didn't seem like it was being used for windows, most of the cups and bowls I saw looked like they were probably hand-blown.

One particular relief caught my attention and I was sure I had spent almost an hour walking around inspecting it. Unless there was a lot of artistic liberty being used here, I got the answer to my earlier question about dragons. There was a giant relief carving on one of the buildings of a dragon with four limbs, two large wings, and breathing fire. The dragon was surrounded by drakken, draco, and humans. Between them was a ring of what looked like coins and around that was a ring of fire at the edges of the relief that connected to the dragon's breath, surrounding the entire scene. I was a bit worried at first but Luna told me that the fire around the scene symbolized the protection of dragons, it didn't symbolize the dragons being tyrannical jailors or something like that. I wasn't entirely convinced after seeing dragons mostly portrayed as monsters in fantasy stories but I held my tongue about that.

It was late into the afternoon when Piper decided that my little art tour of the city would be over and we should go see about rooms at the inn they liked. Maxwell should be done with the association soon and we'll be able to talk about what our plans are from here. Even if everyone decides that they need to do another delve, after our time in there we should have made plenty of money to wait a while before heading back in. Part of me didn't look forward to going back into the dungeon after finally escaping it... but part of me continued to hunger for the battles and challenges the dungeon had provided.